Fun and Functional

There are a few more flourishes that John and I put into Louise’s kitchen that we’d like to share with you.

When we presented our design ideas to Louise, we proposed stenciling a message in gold on the panel behind one of the hanging pots. Louise laughed out loud and said she loved the idea. We proposed a single word that would be an appropriate call to action for the culinary genius behind CocoaRoar truffles.

Now every time the “Roar!” is revealed, it’s a reminder for Louise to fearlessly have fun in her kitchen.

Another area that we embellished is big on function. When we first visited her kitchen Louise had a stationery metal shelving rack tucked under her little work counter.

We realized this hard working storage unit had the potential to do much more. So John added castors to the legs and a maple cutting board to the top. Now Louise has fun wheeling her cart out from under the counter and turning it into a kitchen island whenever, and wherever, it is needed.

She says she uses it often — because it doubles the counter space in her kitchen!

At the end of the counter we saw an opportunity for knife storage. Housing the knives here freed up counter space elsewhere by eliminating the old knife block. Our initial idea was to add a magnetic knife strip on the edge of the counter, but we thought it would be rather scary to see sharp blades exposed — especially from this view (photo taken from the door of the bedroom).

So I designed a knife block with wood panels on the side, and John came up with the idea to make it out of maple cutting boards. It looks great, holds all of Louise’s knives convenient to the worktop, and supports the edge of the counter that used to tilt.

At the front door, we saw another opportunity for fun. When we started this project, there was a post-it note with an eye drawn on it stuck to the front door.

It was covering the peep-hole.

John and I put our heads together to find a better solution — and were inspired by the image of a spoon and violin on Louise’s website Kitchen Fiddler.

Louise loved the idea of replacing the post-it with a wooden spoon…

that swings out of the way so the Kitchen Fiddler can see who has come to visit.

Finally, this last idea is my personal favorite. We thought it would be fun if Louise’s tiny but mighty kitchen had a baker’s rack like you might find in a commercial bakery. To help manage six trays of truffles during CocoaRoar operations, I designed a rack that is attached to the wall above the refrigerator.

The left side of the rack hinges out of the way so in between truffle-making times Louise can still use the open space on top of the fridge to store large items like paper towels.

Attached is a short video of me showing off the bakers rack (that John cleverly built). My favorite part of the video is when John says it’s an “ingenious solution.” I smile with pride every time I hear it. John’s favorite part is when I clumsily bang the tray against the fridge (he snickers out loud every time he hears it).